Chater & Loewenstein (C&L) provide a compelling case that behavioral science needs to expand beyond individual-focused (i-frame) research if it wishes to engender systemic change. However, we believe their conception of system-focused (s-framed) research is too simplistic. We propose an alternative frame, the community-focused (c-frame), which provides a bridge linking the i- and s-frames, while also highlighting the interdependence between the two. The c-frame foregrounds the role of public and activists in shaping public policy and the role behavioral science can play in studying and fostering systemic change through bottom-up collective action. If behavioral scientists are to contribute to positive social change, and we strongly believe they should (Nyborg et al., Reference Nyborg, Anderies, Dannenberg, Lindahl, Schill, Schlüter and de Zeeuw2016), then research that pursues bottom-up solutions and the empowerment of historically marginalized groups is both an effective and desirable path forward.
The i- versus s-frame distinction assumes a limited policy space where policy occurs either at the level of top-down institutions or atomized individuals, yet this conception has two core problems. First, it presumes an ahistorical theory-of-change characterized by paternalism. In their implied (but not stated) theory-of-change, positive social change occurs when elite institutions and actors (including highly educated scientists) take benevolent and coercive action against bad faith private actors who are at their most harmful when unencumbered by (other) elite institutions. Yet many of the solutions presented as “s-frame interventions”' (per Table 1 in the target article) are policies rooted in collective action. Employer-provided pensions are listed, yet largely exist in the United States as a result of decades of labor action (Sass, Reference Sass1997), long ignored by behavioral scientists (Lott, Reference Lott2014), during which workers regularly risked death at the hand of their employers and the government (Adamic, Reference Adamic1931/2022). Environmental regulations are also listed as s-frame solutions, yet their history is often one of ardent collective action and meek government response, not benevolent administrators acting against fossil-fuel interests without impetus. From 1970 to 2020, the largest protest in US history was the 1970 Earth Day protest, where 1-in-10 people in the United States participated (Rome, Reference Rome2013). This is not to suggest that social progress is unaided by government policy, quite the opposite. Rather, C&L point to paternalism as the social process that led to the adoption of these policies, instead of their adoption being a response to demands made of the powerful by the collective.
In many cases, s-frame solutions pursued without considering bottom-up, c-frame approaches will ultimately serve the corporate interests C&L believe the s-frame overcomes. Some i-frame solutions like individual carbon footprint analysis have, in practice, been implemented to deflect attention from systemic policies (Turner, Reference Turner2014). Corporate interests have also, however, aggressively lobbied governments for “s-frame” policies that support their bottom line and ultimately obstruct aggressive climate action (Brulle, Reference Brulle2018). Focusing exclusively on either of these frames obscures the role that community-engaged behavioral science can play in informing large-scale policy responses. Bottom-up action often presents the greatest threat to corporate environmental degradation, as evidenced by the documented success of social movements, often led by indigenous and historically marginalized groups, in curbing fossil-fuel emissions (Thiri, Villamayor-Tomás, Scheidel, & Demaria, Reference Thiri, Villamayor-Tomás, Scheidel and Demaria2022). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC's) most recent AR6 concluded with high confidence that many national-level climate policies that center just transitions were established in response to movement-based collective action (IPCC, Reference Shukla, Skea, Slade, Khourdajie, van Diemen, McCollum, Pathak, Some, Vyas, Fradera, Belkacemi, Hasija, Lisboa, Luz and Malley2022).
The behavioral sciences have informed our knowledge of individual and collective action and public buy-in to policy and new technologies, and could be leveraged to build social movements and democratize structural change. For example, social norms promote cooperation in social dilemmas (Ostrom, Reference Ostrom2000), facilitate the coordination of large groups of people (Roos, Gelfand, Nau, & Lun, Reference Roos, Gelfand, Nau and Lun2015), and mobilize collective action. The tendency of individuals to conform or coordinate with those around them can reinforce existing norms, even harmful ones, but can also trigger rapid social change (see Constantino et al., Reference Constantino, Sparkman, Kraft-Todd, Bicchieri, Centola, Shell-Duncan and Weber2022, for a review). These social dynamics can account for the outsized impacts of policies such as financial subsidies on rooftop solar adoption and cycling infrastructure on biking (Centola, Reference Centola2021; Kaaronen & Strelkovskii, Reference Kaaronen and Strelkovskii2020), and have been proposed as one mechanism for stabilizing the Earth's climate (Otto et al., Reference Otto, Donges, Cremades, Bhowmik, Hewitt, Lucht and Schellnhuber2020). Appealing to norms and emotions that motivate individuals to align their actions with peers can transform grassroots efforts into social movements (Aron, Reference Aron2022), and are also crucial for effective governance of common-pool resources by maintaining cooperation and reciprocity (Ostrom, Reference Ostrom2000). Indeed, top-down attempts by external actors to regulate commonly owned resources can erode the social norms that enforced sustainable practices in the first place (Ostrom & Nagendra, Reference Ostrom and Nagendra2006). Rather than adopting a coercive perspective on behavior change, c-frame research acknowledges that durable social change can result from collective or coordinated action by groups of individuals.
The c-frame is also ideally suited to understanding and resolving community-level tensions that arise with systemic change and disruption. In August of 2022 the United States passed the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest piece of climate legislation to date, in part because of the efforts of activists. The potential for it to drive an equitable and rapid transition to a net-zero carbon economy depends crucially on demand-side factors. The massive infrastructural and social changes accompanying a rapid energy transition will alter the livelihoods of many communities, opening the possibility of locally concentrated opposition to infrastructures that confer a general public benefit (Stokes, Reference Stokes2016). The challenges inherent in such a transition can drive the formation of unlikely coalitions that come together to support or oppose certain issues (Ciplet, Reference Ciplet2022). Studying these dynamics while embracing community-engaged research may help to resolve disagreements and inform the design of policies that are palatable to a broad range of constituents, and contribute to research exploring the transformative role of deliberative democracy to climate action (Dryzek & Niemeyer, Reference Dryzek and Niemeyer2019; Willis, Curato, & Smith, Reference Willis, Curato and Smith2022).
Tackling complex social problems, including climate change, requires a holistic approach that grapples with the relationships between individuals and the systems in which they exist. A c-frame approach will move behavioral science beyond an i- and s-frame dichotomy toward a more nuanced understanding of how individual, social, and structural change happens in practice.
Chater & Loewenstein (C&L) provide a compelling case that behavioral science needs to expand beyond individual-focused (i-frame) research if it wishes to engender systemic change. However, we believe their conception of system-focused (s-framed) research is too simplistic. We propose an alternative frame, the community-focused (c-frame), which provides a bridge linking the i- and s-frames, while also highlighting the interdependence between the two. The c-frame foregrounds the role of public and activists in shaping public policy and the role behavioral science can play in studying and fostering systemic change through bottom-up collective action. If behavioral scientists are to contribute to positive social change, and we strongly believe they should (Nyborg et al., Reference Nyborg, Anderies, Dannenberg, Lindahl, Schill, Schlüter and de Zeeuw2016), then research that pursues bottom-up solutions and the empowerment of historically marginalized groups is both an effective and desirable path forward.
The i- versus s-frame distinction assumes a limited policy space where policy occurs either at the level of top-down institutions or atomized individuals, yet this conception has two core problems. First, it presumes an ahistorical theory-of-change characterized by paternalism. In their implied (but not stated) theory-of-change, positive social change occurs when elite institutions and actors (including highly educated scientists) take benevolent and coercive action against bad faith private actors who are at their most harmful when unencumbered by (other) elite institutions. Yet many of the solutions presented as “s-frame interventions”' (per Table 1 in the target article) are policies rooted in collective action. Employer-provided pensions are listed, yet largely exist in the United States as a result of decades of labor action (Sass, Reference Sass1997), long ignored by behavioral scientists (Lott, Reference Lott2014), during which workers regularly risked death at the hand of their employers and the government (Adamic, Reference Adamic1931/2022). Environmental regulations are also listed as s-frame solutions, yet their history is often one of ardent collective action and meek government response, not benevolent administrators acting against fossil-fuel interests without impetus. From 1970 to 2020, the largest protest in US history was the 1970 Earth Day protest, where 1-in-10 people in the United States participated (Rome, Reference Rome2013). This is not to suggest that social progress is unaided by government policy, quite the opposite. Rather, C&L point to paternalism as the social process that led to the adoption of these policies, instead of their adoption being a response to demands made of the powerful by the collective.
In many cases, s-frame solutions pursued without considering bottom-up, c-frame approaches will ultimately serve the corporate interests C&L believe the s-frame overcomes. Some i-frame solutions like individual carbon footprint analysis have, in practice, been implemented to deflect attention from systemic policies (Turner, Reference Turner2014). Corporate interests have also, however, aggressively lobbied governments for “s-frame” policies that support their bottom line and ultimately obstruct aggressive climate action (Brulle, Reference Brulle2018). Focusing exclusively on either of these frames obscures the role that community-engaged behavioral science can play in informing large-scale policy responses. Bottom-up action often presents the greatest threat to corporate environmental degradation, as evidenced by the documented success of social movements, often led by indigenous and historically marginalized groups, in curbing fossil-fuel emissions (Thiri, Villamayor-Tomás, Scheidel, & Demaria, Reference Thiri, Villamayor-Tomás, Scheidel and Demaria2022). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC's) most recent AR6 concluded with high confidence that many national-level climate policies that center just transitions were established in response to movement-based collective action (IPCC, Reference Shukla, Skea, Slade, Khourdajie, van Diemen, McCollum, Pathak, Some, Vyas, Fradera, Belkacemi, Hasija, Lisboa, Luz and Malley2022).
The behavioral sciences have informed our knowledge of individual and collective action and public buy-in to policy and new technologies, and could be leveraged to build social movements and democratize structural change. For example, social norms promote cooperation in social dilemmas (Ostrom, Reference Ostrom2000), facilitate the coordination of large groups of people (Roos, Gelfand, Nau, & Lun, Reference Roos, Gelfand, Nau and Lun2015), and mobilize collective action. The tendency of individuals to conform or coordinate with those around them can reinforce existing norms, even harmful ones, but can also trigger rapid social change (see Constantino et al., Reference Constantino, Sparkman, Kraft-Todd, Bicchieri, Centola, Shell-Duncan and Weber2022, for a review). These social dynamics can account for the outsized impacts of policies such as financial subsidies on rooftop solar adoption and cycling infrastructure on biking (Centola, Reference Centola2021; Kaaronen & Strelkovskii, Reference Kaaronen and Strelkovskii2020), and have been proposed as one mechanism for stabilizing the Earth's climate (Otto et al., Reference Otto, Donges, Cremades, Bhowmik, Hewitt, Lucht and Schellnhuber2020). Appealing to norms and emotions that motivate individuals to align their actions with peers can transform grassroots efforts into social movements (Aron, Reference Aron2022), and are also crucial for effective governance of common-pool resources by maintaining cooperation and reciprocity (Ostrom, Reference Ostrom2000). Indeed, top-down attempts by external actors to regulate commonly owned resources can erode the social norms that enforced sustainable practices in the first place (Ostrom & Nagendra, Reference Ostrom and Nagendra2006). Rather than adopting a coercive perspective on behavior change, c-frame research acknowledges that durable social change can result from collective or coordinated action by groups of individuals.
The c-frame is also ideally suited to understanding and resolving community-level tensions that arise with systemic change and disruption. In August of 2022 the United States passed the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest piece of climate legislation to date, in part because of the efforts of activists. The potential for it to drive an equitable and rapid transition to a net-zero carbon economy depends crucially on demand-side factors. The massive infrastructural and social changes accompanying a rapid energy transition will alter the livelihoods of many communities, opening the possibility of locally concentrated opposition to infrastructures that confer a general public benefit (Stokes, Reference Stokes2016). The challenges inherent in such a transition can drive the formation of unlikely coalitions that come together to support or oppose certain issues (Ciplet, Reference Ciplet2022). Studying these dynamics while embracing community-engaged research may help to resolve disagreements and inform the design of policies that are palatable to a broad range of constituents, and contribute to research exploring the transformative role of deliberative democracy to climate action (Dryzek & Niemeyer, Reference Dryzek and Niemeyer2019; Willis, Curato, & Smith, Reference Willis, Curato and Smith2022).
Tackling complex social problems, including climate change, requires a holistic approach that grapples with the relationships between individuals and the systems in which they exist. A c-frame approach will move behavioral science beyond an i- and s-frame dichotomy toward a more nuanced understanding of how individual, social, and structural change happens in practice.
Competing interest
None.